Students partake in drug trials to raise much needed cash

Fancy
being paid $3800 to have a four-night sleepover at a medical studies clinic?

All
you need to do is participate in an ever-stigmatised drug trial.

Criteria
include having a healthy BMI, being willing to be administrated a medicine,
complete a four-night sleep over and go back for seven half-hours worth of follow up
appointments.

After finding the trial advertised on student based job
website Student Job Search, student Leo says he conducted his own research prior to
committing to the trial, both online and meeting with his doctor for advice.

As a first time trialist, Leo had his own
misconceptions and worries, especially when he was first administered the drug as part of the trial.

“[When I was injected] I was like oh my god, what if I just die right now for $4000, like is
this really worth it."

Leo says apart from having a drip in his
arm so blood could be taken frequently, his stay during the trial was
comfortable.

“It’s a pretty nice environment to be tested
on in,” he says.

“It didn’t feel like a hospital at all, it
had pool tables and carpet and television. I think just having the lounge and the television just
distracts you, [from the fact] you’re actually in a hospital, it just felt
like a hostel really,” he says.

Contrary
to belief the large sum paid out to volunteers is not risk related. Volunteers are paid based on their
time spent involved in the trial not based on the risk of the drug.

Whether patients are administrated a first-in-human medicine, a placebo, a patent or a copy of
a medicine that is already on the market they will be paid the same.

Auckland
Clinical Studies (ACS) Operations Manager, Mary Ellis- Pegler says payment relates to how long
they’re at the clinic and what they have to do whilst they’re there.

For example, how many
blood pressures, temperatures, urine samples, and blood samples have to
be taken.

“That
is a reasonable fare, reimbursement for their time, and the procedures they’ve
endured, and often you can work it out if you divide it all up by the number of
hours and everything, often it’ll come to sort of just over the minimum wage –
the number of hours, so it is fair and reasonable, the ethics committee have to
approve that,” she says.

In an industry stigmatised for being secretive, ACS places importance on
transparency.

Ellis- Pegler says it’s important to stop people thinking it’s
like a guinea pig situation.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions,” she says.

“There’s not a huge amount
of information out there in the community about clinical trials.

"It’s constantly regulated and audited industry, for very obvious reasons, it’s all
about safety… all studies have to go to the ethics committee, all studies have
to go to med safe, nothing can be approved to start, until protocol [has been
followed].”